New London—Democrat Chris Murphy faced a lively and hostile debate audience tonight that cheered Republican Linda McMahon and disrupted Murphy’s answers with boos and shouts from the darkness of the Garde Arts Center.

In the third of their four televised U.S. Senate debates, Murphy and McMahon broke new ground by sharply disagreeing over the free-speech rights of corporations, the public financing of campaigns and, generally, the role of money in politics.

And McMahon reinforced the depth of her faith in tax cuts as economic stimulus, channeling Ronald Reagan’s defense of trickle-down economics by saying, “A rising tide will lift all boats.”

But it was the crowd that asserted itself with repeated interruptions of Murphy that ranged from derisive laughter to boos to one woman’s shout for him to simply “shut up.”